Good morning and welcome back to the Tip Sheet, a weekly newsletter from Tom Dudchik’s Capitol Report written by Mike Cerulli.

This week, we’re bringing you two stories that are primed to shape the race for governor as we near the end of July. 

On the Democratic side, Josh Elliott is readying an advertising blitz in the final few weeks before the primary election. The Tip Sheet has a sneak preview of what to expect.

On the Republican side, Ryan Fazio campaigned this weekend with Jill Barry, the moderate Glastonbury lawmaker who was unexpectedly defeated in the contest for the endorsement of the town’s Democrats. Barry and Fazio spoke with the Tip Sheet about their apparent alignment.

Let’s dive in.

Lamont’s family fortune features in new Elliott ad

It didn’t take long for Josh Elliott to break out a familiar tool in the campaign playbook: the disembodied voice of an attack ad narrator.

Roughly one week into his publicly-funded paid advertising push, Elliott is preparing to blitz Connecticut’s airwaves with three additional ads highlighting his work in the legislature and cutting a sharp contrast with Ned Lamont. The first of those ads has all the hallmarks of an attack ad – one aimed at Lamont’s great-grandfather and the governor himself.

“Meet the Lamonts,” the narrator says while orchestral music with a striking similarity to the “Succession” soundtrack plays.

The narrator goes on to introduce viewers to one Thomas Lamont, an early titan of American finance who chaired J.P. Morgan & Co. Those familiar with the history of the Morgan banking empire likely know of Thomas Lamont. He is one of the central figures in Ron Chernow’s epic 800-page history of the family, “The House of Morgan.”

Thomas Lamont shaped some of the most critical years of the bank that has grown into the nation's largest. He was the acting head of J.P. Morgan & Co. at the start of the Great Depression. Years later, Lamont played a role in the birth of another Wall Street powerhouse. When the Glass-Steagall Act forced the divorce of commercial and investment banking, senior J.P. Morgan bankers huddled to discuss the formation of a new entity. Their chosen meeting place was a remote estate off the coast of Maine where the Lamont family has long summered. The meeting resulted in the creation of Morgan Stanley.

To this day, Morgan Stanley’s official corporate history names the front porch of the Lamont family’s Sky Harbor residence as the location of the bank’s inception.

Elliott’s attack ad draws on a version of this Depression-era history to paint the Lamont family as out of touch with the rest of America.

“Funny how some families always wind up on top,” the narrator says.

From there, the ad switches focus from Thomas Lamont to his great-grandson.

“Three generations later, here’s Ned Lamont, worth nearly a billion dollars, running the most unequal state in America,” Elliott’s narrator says. 

Elliott has switched from calling Lamont a billionaire (a description that is not backed up by Forbes’ list of billionaires and impossible to assess using the information in Lamont’s financial disclosure forms) and begun using that much less precise line: “nearly a billion.”

Attacks on Ned Lamont’s family wealth have existed for as long as he’s been in the statewide political arena. Elliott’s forthcoming broadside, which will hit the airwaves on Wednesday, represents the latest iteration of these attacks – dressed up in the language of the populist left and accompanied by Elliott’s main policy critiques of Lamont.

Two other Elliott ads are set to follow the attack ad. One will highlight Elliott’s work to secure free telephone calls for prison inmates. Another will feature testimonials about the high cost of living in the state, with a particular focus on property taxes and electricity rates.

It is very likely that Elliott and Ryan Fazio will each be on the airwaves in the next couple weeks with ads attacking the governor’s record on affordability issues. One will hit from the left, the other from the right. Fazio’s social media posts reveal that his team has been combing through years of recordings of Lamont’s public addresses and exchanges with reporters – offering hints of what could soon be landing on screens across the state.

One recent Fazio post clipped a line from a Lamont speech in which the governor joked that if ratepayers were worried about their bills, they would turn their lights off more. Lamont made that remark at the annual breakfast meeting hosted by the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce in 2024. The breakfast has traditionally been a venue for governors to try their hand at comedy.

Another Fazio post featured part of an exchange Lamont had with Paul Hughes of the Waterbury Republican-American in which Lamont appeared annoyed that Hughes cited a statistic about Connecticut’s high energy costs.

Lamont and Elliott will meet on the debate stage Wednesday. WTNH News 8 is hosting the two live at 7:00 PM. Dennis House and yours truly will be asking the questions.

The two Democratic gubernatorial candidates spent some time this weekend preparing for the debate in between campaign stops. In the Lamont camp, the Tip Sheet is told Will Haskell has been lending a hand with his best Josh Elliott impression.

“He would make a good governor”: Barry and Fazio campaign together

It’s an understatement to say that the past couple months have been a wild journey for Jill Barry. In May, the moderate Glastonbury legislator unexpectedly had the Democratic Party’s official endorsement yanked away by local activists unhappy with a few notable breaks she’s made from party orthodoxy.

Mark Pazniokas penned a detailed account of what led to that ouster.

On Sunday, Barry was spotted knocking doors alongside Ryan Fazio in Glastonbury. An eagle-eyed source passed along a photo of the two side-by-side at a doorstep, campaign literature in hand.

Reached by phone, Barry confirmed she’d canvassed with Fazio and described the Greenwich senator as “intelligent, genuine, and thorough.”

“He would make a good governor,” Barry said.

Fazio said Glastonbury “should be proud” to have an “independent-minded and bipartisan legislator” like Barry.

“It’s a sad commentary on the state of the Connecticut Democratic Party that moderates like her are not welcome anymore,” Fazio added. “Connecticut residents want practicality over hyper-partisanship and Representative Barry represents that sentiment well.”

As for if or when Barry might make a full, public endorsement of Fazio, she said she might have more to say about the governor’s race in the coming weeks.

In Barry’s own race, it appears the most likely path for her to make a competitive showing in November is a cross-endorsement from the Independent Party and the Republican Party. The arrangement is not finalized yet.

Vin Candelora has told the Tip Sheet that, given the three candidates in the race, Barry is his preferred choice. It is unclear which party Barry would caucus with if she wins re-election or if the Democratic caucus would be open to welcoming a member who campaigned with the Republican nominee for governor and won on the GOP’s ballot line.

That’s all for this week. We’ll be back next week with another edition of the Tip Sheet!